it. The bridle and bit I had used to get Cimarron off me. The nail gun. Now all tagged and marked as state’s exhibits.
I took a hit of the bourbon to fend off the chill and kept looking. There were no surprises. No revelations. No clues, at least none I could see. Just the crisp air and sweet smells of horse feed mixed with the musky tang of manure. Just a nondescript barn where a man had died a gruesome death.
I pulled two blankets from a railing and put them around my shoulders. I sat down in the straw and made myself comfortable. I sneezed, maybe from the dust, or maybe from the cold. For medicinal purposes, I guzzled some more bourbon, liquid aurum to warm the throat. I leaned back and tried to concentrate on words like “evidence” and “proof’ and “reasonable doubt,” but my mind was a battery running out of juice. I couldn’t concentrate and after a while, I didn’t even try. I listened to the snorts of the horses and the shuffling of their hooves. Outside, an owl hooted. I hummed a song to myself and dug deeper into the straw, a babe in the manger, finally closing my eyes and burying myself under the warm velvet blanket of sleep.
I don’t know if it was the morning sun or the cold that woke me. The sun slanted through the open slat in the wall and struck me squarely in the eyes. Dust motes floated in the light, and the cold bit through me to the bone. I tried to stand, but every joint was locked into place. I felt like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz. It took several moments to work out the knots and kinks in my back. I felt an urgent need to pee and a secondary need to brush my teeth. A cup of coffee and a Danish wouldn’t have hurt anything, either.
I needed to get back to my apartment, shower and change for court. I started walking out when something caught my eye. The shaft of sunlight crossed the barn floor and ended barely two feet from where I had slept. There, in a depression I had made in the straw, the sunlight caught the reflection of a wedge of glass that twinkled back at me. I followed the sunlight four paces, bent down and dug into the straw. Up came Kip’s video camera, lens pointed to the sun.
It was clear and cold, the sky a bottomless blue. Light snow was falling, puffy, dry flakes unlike what I was used to in the five winters I spent as a student-athlete in the hills of central Pennsylvania. Yeah, that’s right. It took five years, but I got my degree. I remember those ice storms, including one during a game against Notre Dame. The referee fell on his ass flipping the coin, and the rest of us could barely break a huddle without skating like Dorothy Hamill on LSD. My fingers were numb by the end of the first quarter, but I refused to wear gloves or a second pair of socks. Let the sissy wide receivers keep their pinkies toasty. I played with short sleeves and a cutoff jersey that stopped right above my navel. After missing a tackle on the opening kickoff, I slid halfway across the field on my belly and ice water sloshed down my jock. I can’t remember if we won or lost, but I seem to recall spending Sunday through Thursday in the infirmary with the flu.
That was then. This is now.
Here the snow was dry and powdery, just like the travel posters show, and the roads were already clear, snow piled high alongside. I wasn’t as polite driving back into town as I had been getting out. I honked at tortoiselike tourists. I skidded around one corner and ignored every posted speed limit I could find.
Back in town, I stood ten minutes in the doorway waiting for the camera store to open. The female clerk gave me a curious look. Maybe it was the wildness in my eyes, maybe the smell of straw and manure. After a moment, she found the battery I needed and an earphone, took my cash, and watched me leave, the bell attached to the front door tinkling merrily.
When I had picked up the camera in the barn, I muttered a private prayer to whatever God protects the semi-honest man who doesn’t strangle kittens or litter in public parks. The prayer was answered when I found the on button engaged. The battery, of course, would be dead. It was. So far, so good.
A silent thank-you.
Through the Plexiglas cover, I saw the tape was three-quarters unwound. A couple of hours had been recorded before the battery gave out. With any luck, it would all be there.
Not the video, of course, once Kip left the loft. The camera had been buried in the straw. But the sound. The audio would be there. What had Kip told me? This baby can pick up a rat farting at fifty yards.
I was back in the car, parked at the curb, engine running, heater on, my heart thumping as the tape rewound. It was one of those Super-8 formats you don’t need a separate VCR to show on your TV. I rewound to the beginning of the tape, fighting the urge to see the middle first. I attached the earphone jack to the camera and watched through the viewfinder as I hit the play button.
The first shot was a speck against the sky. The lens zoomed. A bird. The frame jumped around as Kip tried to steady the camera. “Lord of flight,” Kip said into the microphone. “A golden eagle. Last of a breed. Mighty predator.” Kip went on for a while, sounding like a pint-size Marlin Perkins. The bird disappeared into some spruce trees and Kip said, “Shit, where’d he go?”
Next, a shot of the kids from the neighboring cabin at the Lazy Q. Then, a dog urinating against a tree. Then, there it was: a darkened room, growing lighter as the lens opened wider. The nine-volt lantern cast half of Jo Jo’s face in a white, bleaching light, the other half in darkness, but I saw her, huddled under a blanket.
“ No, Jake, please. I’m so ashamed. The boy shouldn’t be here.”
The camera jiggled and seemed to adjust itself to the light. “Uncle Jake, please, you’re cutting off the angle. I want to zoom from medium close up to extreme close up.”
He did, and Jo Jo’s face filled the screen, tear-streaked cheeks and puffy eyes. But close up, the eyes revealed something else altogether. That blazing intelligence, that quick mind, that total control.
Her forehead was wrinkled in thought. She wasn’t in shock. She wasn’t in fear. Her brain was in overdrive. Why didn’t I see it at the time?
“ Jake, no! Haven’t you done enough to me already?” She buried her head in her hands.
I didn’t say, “What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t say, “What the hell are you talking about?” I didn’t say anything. But then, I thought she was talking about old times, or that she was confused. Hell, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I sure didn’t think she had it all figured out, that the prosecutor lady knew the tape might just pop up as evidence and it might be nice to show the All-Pro pervert had a kid videotaping his evil deeds.
“ Okay,” I said on the tape. “Kip. Cut! I’ve got enough.”
Was it my imagination, or was there an unnecessary harshness to my voice. The screen faded to black.
Oh, Jo Jo, you are one bright, evil-hearted woman.
The screen flashed on again. Too dark to make out anything. Then, the lantern came on, and Kip’s voice: “That’s better. Natural light just wasn’t doing it.”
I shooed him out again, and the screen went dark. But I knew there would be more.
The camera would be off now. No telling how long.
The screen lightened, then twirled upside down. A rustling sound through the earphone. An oomph that might have come from Kip. “Put me dow-nk.”
The camera must have been dropped or thrown, Kip’s thumb plopping the record button. The auto focus was trying to sharpen the picture, but all I could see were fuzzy, thickened pieces of straw, now covering the lenses. The camera had fallen.
Show time. Again, I said a prayer.
Another muffled oomph, fading away. Kip was being carried up the ladder, a hand over his mouth.
The voices were indistinct from the loft. But the footsteps pounding the boards were picked up clearly. Heavy feet. Soft words, “Quiet down, boy.”
Then, my voice calling out to Kip, when I thought he was playing games again. “Kip! You’re starting to bug
